Mortification of the Flesh: A Story of Clothes Shopping

It start's young, doesn't it?

With built-in childcare in town, aka Grandma, I've had the opportunity to do some things I have not done because there simply has been no time. Some painful passages must be travelled alone. Some are made worse with companions--especially if they're under three feet tall. Clothes shopping is one of those journeys.

For a self-conscious fashion unconscious girl, mortification of the flesh is unnecessary. All she needs to do, is drive the few miles to the local mall, gather up the latest greatest fashion trends in multiple colors, lock herself in a closet lit with miniature Klieg lights revealing every paunchy cell of flesh and strip whilst gazing at three-way mirrors. If she is lucky, mirrors are behind her too, so that she may enjoy the horror of seeing herself as others see her from behind--ass and all.

The DaVinci Code novel by Dan Brown, currently enjoying added controversy because he's accused of plagarism, featured a crazy Opus Dei member strapping on a studded strap (studs in) to pierce the skin, cause pain and let blood known as mortification of the flesh. Notably this was done by a celibate, albino monk--a man.

Women need no such rituals to experience pain. Underwire bras a size too small, four-inch heels, and tight jeans exact punishment all day long. Who needs to torture herself for a half-hour a day, when she can do it all day and in public, too?

So the shopping trip started as a mission: if I don't buy some new clothes soon people will think that I dress in ripped khaki shorts because I need to, not because I'm extraordinarily lazy.

Oh the styles these days. What fashion house in New York thought "Skits"--short shorts (think Jessica Simpson) wrapped in a skirt covering--were a good idea? It gets worse. Who imagined that full skirts, ala June Cleaver on crack, were a good idea? Skinny, anorexic girls like Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Ritchie wear these types of things to give them shape. If you already have a shape and then some, wearing this skirt could easily pass for a desire for the dreaded mortification fo the flesh.

Many styles that look appealing on the hanger, lose the appeal when viewed up close and personal in the clothing closet. What was once a "hmmm, that could be cute" morphs into not just "no way" but "oh, hell no." Anything the color Kelly green. Anything shorter than two inches above the knee. Anything sleeveless. Anything bra-less.

Are you kidding me? Women with Double D cups wear camisoles with no bras? Please, shoot (I don't have Double D cups, by the way, that was just an example) anyone who wears these travesties. Yuck.

Life is too short and too hard, to endure such self-inflicted pain as clothes shopping. We women excel at inflicting personal pain. Men excel at avoiding it. A Size 5 friend of my fretted that she better get a certain kind of wedding dress because she didn't want to "look wide" from behind. What do you say to that? The woman will probably never look better in her life than she does now and she thinks that her Size 5 ass is fat. The sad thing is, when my ass was Size 5 and when I was her age, I thought the same thing.

So now, when I really do possess junk in the trunk and I also possess some actual perspective, I can only shake my head in dismay.

Forget ritual mortification. I'm just plain mortified.